I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ – Phil 1:6

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chibi maruko chan

i was re-reading the posts on my old blog, up to when i posted a checklist of what i did before coming to Hong Kong back in 2010.

it takes a while for my own words to sink in, for some of the old memories to resurface. some scenes of the past get mentally re-enacted and i get reminded of the things i felt at that time.

i saw the enthusiasm and apprehension that i had, 3 years back, of starting my undergraduate life in Hong Kong.

i saw how uni life seemed to me at the start, the stress of studying 4-5 hours a day (i think i topped it by studying on an average of 12 hours daily during study break in year 2), the emotional attachment with my college friends and how much i missed them in the early period of being abroad.

my college besties. two of them just graduated recently and the rest graduating next year ><

i saw that i began to see hypocrisy, superficial friendships and ties, how different people got different treatment, all in the society that i was put in. in other words, i was beginning to see the world as it was.

i saw that i was determined not to be the same, to remain as honest and pure as i could in a world i deemed to be evil and corrupt.

(on a less serious note) i was reminded of my “chibi maruko chan” look back in year 1.

omg me and charlene in year 1!!! outside medical library with matching outfits!!!! hahahha we have been through a lot together my dear sis ❤

i look back and see how much God let me experience. and how things that seemed so important back can be just a distant memory, with only strands of emotions attached to it. but through it all, God’s love and grace only gets amplified year by year.

was listening to this cantonese worship song today and thought it represented my thoughts well. even though i still don’t get why God works the way He does sometimes, He has performed enough miracles in my life to make me believe in His word and His ways.

for He said in all things, God works for the good of those who love him (Romans 8:28)

daily murmurs

Love

The love for equals is a human thing - of friend for friend, brother for brother. It is to love what is loving and lovely, the world smiles.

The love for the less fortunate is a beautiful thing - the love for those who suffer, for those who are poor, the sick, the failures, the unlovely. This is compassion, and it touches the heart of the world.

The love for the more fortunate is a rare thing - to love those who succeed where we fail, to rejoice without envy with those who rejoice, the love of the poor for the rich, of the black man for the white man. The world is always bewildered by its saints.

And then there is the love for the enemy - love for the one who does not love you but mocks, threatens, and inflicts pain. The tortured's love for the torturer. This is God's love. It conquers the world.

~ Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

for those who wander

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,

From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean--roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin--his control
Stops with the shore;--upon the watery plain
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor doth remain
A shadow of man’s ravage, save his own,
When for a moment, like a drop of rain,
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan,
Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown.

His steps are not upon thy paths,--thy fields
Are not a spoil for him,--thou dost arise
And shake him from thee; the vile strength he wields
For earth’s destruction thou dost all despise,
Spurning him from thy bosom to the skies,
And send’st him, shivering in thy playful spray
And howling, to his gods, where haply lies
His petty hope in some near port or bay,
And dashest him again to earth: —there let him lay.
~ Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

Not till we are completely lost or turned around... do we begin to find ourselves.
~ Henry David Thoreau